Lanvin / Fall 2012 RTW

Ten years of Alber! The birthday boy threw a whopping Lanvin party tonight—true, heartwarming, campy, and calorific fun for a stadium-full of the family of fashion. At least for an hour or two—first, a slam-dunk of a collection, and then a sprawling after-celebration—he magicked up a surreally happy respite from the stressed, snippy, gossip-ridden melee of fashion. Taking to a glittery stage, backed by Joey Arias and a motley band of dance musicians, Alber Elbaz gave a sweet, gender-adapted rendition of Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera,” singing, “When I was just a little boy, I asked my mother, ‘What will I be?’ ” Then, throwing open a cavernous back lot, he let them eat cake—piles of petit-fours, macaroons, candied fruits, bonbons, chocolate éclairs, and sugared almonds on groaning trolleys—and be merry.

If the global popularity of Lanvin can be measured by the mob of international TV cameras that swallowed Elbaz up after the show, it’s brinking on mega. By good fortune of a long relationship with the brand’s Taiwanese owner, Mrs. Shaw-Lan Wang—and a decade of quiet dedication to serving women—Elbaz stands on the threshold of “the Asian century,” with Chinese store openings rolling out before him. They’ll add more millions of fans to the droves of American and European women he’s wooed with draped silk and zippy crepe and a humorous, human touch since he stepped into the then-dormant house in 2001.

But the show? It was a fast-stomping, glorious spectacle of all the achievements Elbaz has made his own as the triumphant pioneer of the Dress Decade. It wasn’t a retrospective, per se. Always restless to improve his grip on cut and on communicating something about the current state of working, playing, multitasking womanhood, Elbaz isn’t one to recline on his laurels. Instead of playing it long and self-congratulatory, he stepped on the gas, sending models out at a businesslike clip in wave after wave of the clean-cut to the flouncy to the elaborate and frankly bonkers-brilliant things he does to cover a woman’s body from neck to knee.

He does it in solid shape and color, molding neoprene in bottle green, violet, chrome yellow, or rust red, with frontal peplums smoothed away in back. He does it with bounce, for those who like an hourglass waist and a voluminous skirt, in a little dance dress, a redingote coat, or flouncy taffeta trench. He deals for the strict and severe with power-black tailoring, and turbo-charged sculpted leather for the rocker-mom (with a wild, cable-knit-embossed motorcycle suit thrown in). He thinks of cheering a rainy day with a genius gold-flecked raincoat. And then, when he’s on the subject of evening, there’s no stopping him: He loads maximal jewels on sober tops and dresses, flings crazy red fur boas and coats on shoulders, and lets loose with giant faux emerald, sapphire, and garnet necklaces, with huge mirrored pendants swinging from them.

Toward the end, as some of the girls marched forward, mirrors glinting, it almost looked as if beams of light were streaming joyfully from somewhere just above their hearts. Which is exactly how fashion at its best ought to make a woman feel. Thanks, Alber, for capturing that. Here’s to the next ten years.

Photos: Yannis Vlamos/GoRunway.com
Source: www.vogue.com